


the other way around

by newisalwaysbetter



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Guns, Property Destruction, Prose Poem, Sort Of, ambiguous situation, immediately post-Chinatown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24576250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newisalwaysbetter/pseuds/newisalwaysbetter
Summary: If she wants radical action, he is hers. As always.(Prompt: "Tell me who did this to you.")
Relationships: Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nyxierose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxierose/gifts).



_Tell me who did this to you._

Seven words. 

They’re jotted down on the back of one of Denise’s grocery receipts and slid under her door. The name sits in neat military script below, as if Lucy wouldn’t have known at an instant, as if the conspiratorial nature of the thing didn’t already scream 

_Flynn_

There’s no question of how she’s feeling. No question of what she needs. The others have already asked these questions, for their own comfort more than for hers. This is not a question. 

This is a rallying cry.

A pen rolls under the door, and Lucy takes it up. Her hands are trembling, but seeing her own white knuckles steadies her. She writes,

_Rittenhouse_

She isn’t certain there’ll be a response. It’s possible that this is entirely for her benefit. But after a second, the paper returns. 

Seven words.

_What do you want me to do?_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written at the request of @Nyxierose, and also as day eighteen of Mental Health Whump. Included in that collection.

_What do you want me to do?,_ he’d written, and slipped the note under her door. Seven words, and he’d hoped it was enough.

The note had come back with three sentences.

_Help me_

Flynn disables the alarm that night, and as he follows Lucy through the starry forest beyond the bunker, she reaches back without looking to take his right hand in in hers and pull him close. It is a catalyst, and Flynn’s warmth and steadiness draws inevitably closer to her cold trembling, as surely as a chemical reaction reaches for equilibrium. He ends up walking bare inches behind Lucy, half-breathing down her neck, while Lucy’s hand holds tight to the hand he’s got on his gun. She’s plenty warm by the time they

_destroy them._

set the Rittenhouse base on fire from the inside and pick off the survivors. Lucy strides through the smoldering ruins like a conquering queen, gun in hand and Flynn at her back, but there’s no need for either. It is done

_For Rufus,_

when they blow up the _Mothership_ somewhere outside of Vegas. Flynn holds Lucy behind him, sheltering her from the heat of the explosion while her heat presses into his back, cleansing as a crucible as his sins go up in flames. The next day Lucy buys them sunscreen. They are have entered the desert

_for Amy,_

when Lucy’s phone starts to ring and she asks Flynn to pull the stolen car over to the side of the road. When she returns, after forty long minutes in the desert, Lucy’s eyes are red and the phone is gone, but she’s smiling,

_for your wife and daughter_

and there’s a pale band of skin on Flynn’s finger where his ring used to be, and for once they believe in safety for themselves,

_and for everyone else they took everything from._

and when Lucy finally falls asleep, on a couch in the lobby of a seedy hotel somewhere no one will find them, Flynn is there to guard her, and to be sure she doesn’t cry herself to sleep again. When he retrieves the original paper from the pocket where he’s kept it all this time, its folds are beginning to wear thin. All the same, Flynn studies the words of the final sentence long enough to commit them to memory. It’s no journal, but it’ll have to do. Lucy stirs in her sleep, and Flynn instinctively trails his fingertips across her temple.

 _You and I will make everything better._

Seven words, and it’s enough. He understands.


End file.
